Chapter 8 #3
“Should have known you’d be in the kitchen, Layla,” a stony female voice drawled from behind me.
Heart in mouth, I spun around to see a woman standing in the doorway.
She looked to be in her late fifties. Her once lush, light brown hair was now straggly and stippled with white.
The woman’s skin was sallow with a yellow tinge created by years of alcohol abuse and malnutrition.
She never ate, you see. Every dollar the state deemed to give her was spent on cheap vodka and cigarettes.
One thing it was never spent on was caring for her only daughter.
Her name was Kelly Hardin.
My mother.
“What are you doing here?” I asked flatly, my eyes scanning her sunken, alcohol-ravaged cheeks and straggly salt-and-pepper hair. “Are you dead too?”
“As if my own daughter can’t even greet me like a civilized person after all this time.” She let out a humorless snort. “Should’ve known John Stone’s influence would have turned you against me. He was always bitter that I kept you away from this awful club.”
“It’s not awful,” I muttered. “It’s beautiful.”
She leaned forward slightly and shrieked, “It’s what killed your father.”
Cold fingers crept down my spine, and I whispered, “What?”
My mother walked past me and pulled out a seat at the kitchen table before sitting her ass down and twisting her face toward me. “Your father died because of this fucking club.”
“My dad died in a car accident,” I argued. “He was driving in heavy rain, and he lost control of the car and crashed into a tree. He died instantly.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “But did you ever ask yourself why Stevie was out at two o’clock in the morning in bad weather when he had a wife at home who loved him and a young daughter?”
The pain ripped through my chest so powerfully that I couldn’t stand up anymore. I grabbed hold of a chair and pulled it away from the table before sinking down onto it. My eyes met my mom’s, and I cut out, “I never questioned it, but it doesn’t mean it had anything to do with the club.”
“I know it did,” she said, her face twisting into an ugly, painful expression. “Because I know why my Stevie was out there.”
The fight drained out of my body, and my shoulders slumped defeatedly. “Tell me.”
“Stevie always wondered why Elise Bell married Robert Henderson. He questioned it constantly, but then when John got back from Kuwait and Elise stayed with Robert, he knew something was wrong. Everybody knew how much Elise loved John Stone.” She let out a brittle laugh.
“Well, everybody except John himself, seeing as it took him no time to go off to find himself and knock up some other bitch within a few weeks.”
I rolled my eyes because my mom was going over ancient history and adding her particular nasty twist to further her own screwed up agenda. I knew what had happened between John and Elise—we all did—and there was a lot more to the story than she knew or cared about.
“Your dad was a realtor, the best one in the area,” she continued.
“People used to hire him from all over Wyoming and northern Colorado, because he was that good. Henderson approached him one day about buying a property and putting it in Elise’s name, but he wanted it kept quiet, even from Elise.
Henderson offered him a lot of money, too much money, and your dad became suspicious.
That was when he started doing his own little investigation. ”
My eyebrows pulled together. “What did he find out?”
“That Henderson was involved with an MC over in Mapletree, and that they were up to no good.”
Nausea hit my belly, and I whispered, “The Burning Sinners.”
She nodded. “Your dad started going out late and following Henderson. He even agreed to the deal, just to play along with him so he could find out information and take it to John. He knew from the get-go that something wasn’t right with Henderson and Elise.
She would never choose that man over John Stone and certainly not so soon after the so-called love of her life’s apparent death in Kuwait. ”
“So, Dad was following the mayor that night?” I asked, my heart squeezing painfully.
“He called me,” she admitted. “Told me he had evidence that the mayor was involved in something awful, along with that biker club, and that it would blow the town wide open. He was going straight over to see John Stone and tell him everything.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“An hour later, the police were knocking at the door, telling me your dad was dead.”
My eyes filled with tears, and I had to hold back my sob.
It was absurd, but strangely, it made sense. My dad died on a back road between Hambleton and a neighboring area called Mapletree. It was where the Burning Sinners’ clubhouse was back in the day, at least until the Speed Demons destroyed it.
“Why did you blame John?” I asked. “He didn’t cause it, and knowing him as well as I do now, Mom, he wouldn’t have allowed Dad to put himself in danger if he had any suspicions as to what was happening.”
“Stevie was out there for him,” she spat.
“Everything was always about him. Even when we all thought he’d died overseas, everything became about looking after Elise.
What about me, sitting at home caring for you?
I never wanted kids; it was Stevie who persuaded me, so I had you to make him happy, and he left me literally holding the baby while he was out digging into shit he had no business being involved with, all for John fucking Stone! ”
Something in her tone resonated with me just as a realization began to form.
For years, I’d had to listen to her vitriol about the Speed Demons.
John Stone was my godfather, and Dad tasked him with the responsibility of looking out for me if anything happened to him.
John took his promises seriously, and it had never made sense to me why he left me alone all those years.
Except now, seeing my mom’s hatred for him and the club, I could understand why he stayed away.
If I had the choice, I wouldn’t have gone near her bitter old ass either.
Plus, John had the added complication of the club. The Speed Demons used to be one percenters, and it was only John’s influence as Bandit’s son and the future president that persuaded the boys to give up their diamond patch and eventually go clean, and even then, it took years.
My mom would’ve done anything to score points off John, and she would’ve done anything to get one over on him, including going to the cops. She’d just admitted that she never wanted me, but still, letting John have me would have driven her crazy.
“You were jealous,” I murmured, slowly shaking my head at her.
“You couldn’t stand the fact that John would have looked after me better than you did.
Rather than letting me have something good, you kept him away, didn’t you?
I know you threatened him with police involvement; he told me, but I thought you were just grieving Dad when you said that.
I never realized how consumed with hate you were. ”
She smiled, her eyes glittering in the dim light. “You would be too if it were your husband.”
“No,” I denied. “If it were Bowie, I’d make him proud by being a good mom and caring for the people he loved the most. I would never neglect my babies the way you neglected me.
I’d work every day to give them everything my husband couldn’t because that’s what love is, Mom…
honoring each other.” My lip curled as I took in her face for the last time and bit out, “Go to Hell.”
In a blink, she was gone.
Moisture welled in my eyes because I knew that my mom being here meant she was dead.
But that was the only time I’d ever cry for her, because really, she’d been dead to me for many years.
I grieved her when I was six and cried with hunger because she hadn’t fed me for three days.
I grieved when I was eleven and had to start high school wearing clothes from Goodwill that were two sizes too small because all her money had been spent on booze.
And the last time I grieved was the day I gave birth to Sunny, and she was nowhere to be seen.
I was done grieving.
My body jolted as a loud crash came from the bar and shouts began to ring out.
Launching from my chair, I looked around, trying to spot a weapon or anything I could use to take down Bear. I went over to the drawer and pulled out a large kitchen knife before opening the overhead cupboards, trying to find anything else that would help.
My gaze fell upon a huge bag of salt, and I stilled because something in the back of my mind pinged.
Wait.
What if...?
—————
Cash
“Brother,” I murmured, shaking Break’s arm. “You okay? Wake up.”
Kit just stared blankly at the wall.
I shook him again, harder. “Break, wake the fuck up. We gotta get Atlas, warn the others, and get our asses outta here.”
Nothing.
I sat back on my haunches and swiped a hand down my face.
Kit was in some kind of damned trance, and I knew somehow that Bear had gotten inside his head. My brother had a lot of demons, and it would be easy to trip him up by using them against him.
My stare lowered to the floor, and I spied Bear’s leather cut, still gripped tightly in Breaker’s fist. One side of my mouth slowly curved up, and I leaned down to grab it.
Bingo.
As my fingertips connected with the leather, sparks flew from it, and a burning pain shot through my hand as if I’d been electrocuted.
“Now, now, now, Cash,” a deep voice said from behind me. “Haven’t you learned your lesson about touchin’ things that don’t belong to you?”
My gut jolted, and slowly, I craned my neck to see Bear sitting nonchalantly in my chair with his arms folded across his chest. I grabbed at the cut again and scrambled to my feet, lunging at the motherfucker, but he disappeared into thin air.